Are you ready for the Metaverse?

Have you ever wondered what the future of the internet will look like? It will look a lot like the metaverse. It will be a level playing field built in a virtual reality world where users can interact, game and experience things as they would in the real world. The internet will soon let you create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.

What have we been doing in the past two years? - Working from home on multiple screens, zoom calls, shopping, e-learning, teleconsultations etc. The Metaverse aims to let you have real world experiences while just doing more of these same things. The possibilities of a virtual world, where everything is supported by lines of codes, could open new revenue streams for companies diving into this new venture and unwrap a new lifestyle for one and all.

This phenomenon began when Facebook rebranded to Meta. ?For Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse is the future of the Internet itself. However, the term metaverse originated in 1992 in a science fiction novel titled ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson. Since then, at its core, ?it has been an exercise in democratising access to experiences that would otherwise be unreachable. Now, the metaverse is not only the next frontier that we’re looking to conquer, it is inevitable reality.

The market estimates and the opportunities thereon are very bullish. Consider this, PwC sees Metaverse as a $1.5trn market by 2030, Goldman Sachs sees it as $8 trn and Bloomberg puts it at $800 Bn by 2024. Microsoft spent $69 bn in the acquisition of Activision Blizzard as part of its plan to scale up and finally, Meta (Facebook) spent $10bn in 2021 to introduce the Metaverse at a global scale!

On the other hand - Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and several other companies are accelerating their metaverse programmes. Even gaming companies such as Epic and Roblox are joining the bandwagon.

The concept of the metaverse though, is still abstract to the common public. How is it going to help us in doing serious and mundane stuff like say working and learning?

The metaverse has multiple applications in business, gaming and immersive experience. It represents a highly interactive three-dimensional virtual world. Like the real world, users can trade land, buildings, and other digital assets and explore the space using their personalised avatars. These avatars are replicas of the user that can do everything a human can do in the real world.

It also has the potential to address all the existing challenges of remote work. It provides managers with a virtual environment where they can meet employees (their avatars), communicate with them, read their body language, and retain in-person interaction. Moreover, the employer can resolve problems like time theft and goldbrick at the workplace by keeping track of the team inside a virtual office.

The metaverse theory has a lot of merit for healthcare professionals and medical staff as well, who were previously unable to visit patients due to geographical limitations. In the virtual world, they can interact with the patient and have clear insight into their health conditions .

One of the biggest applications of metaverse currently, is Gaming. Today, most Metaverse games are decentralised with an integrated economic model to support play-to-earn gaming. Such games allow users to buy, sell, and trade in-game assets in the form of NFTs. Additionally, the idea of avatars exploring the vast virtual space is enticing for players. One of the biggest projects in the metaverse currently is – Decentraland. It allows users to buy land inside the world, host live events, play games, and do more exciting activities, which are also possible in the real world. It is becoming increasingly popular and catching up fast..

Powered by a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), the platform is fully owned and regulated by its users. Users can vote for decisions such as feature upgrades and optimization, propose significant changes, and participate in governance. Decentraland will enable interoperability with multiple other Metaverse projects as its next big upgrade.

Another exciting prospect in the metaverse is travelling. It can allow people to visit places virtually that they can’t go to physically. The Metaverse could eventually become a digital destination where all of us “hang out,” just like with social media today. It will determine friendships, relationships, and interpersonal dynamics, and could enable people from across the world to meet face-to-face without having to travel.?

Bottomline: 2021-22 has been a phenomenal year for this burgeoning metaverse. South Korea established a government-led metaverse alliance that boasts membership of 200+ companies. Microsoft launched a “holoportation” mixed-reality platform called Microsoft Mesh that could revolutionise remote work. Facebook, of course, transformed its identity from a social media company to a metaverse ecosystem. Over the next five years, you're going to see Metaverse technology become real, concrete and sampleable.